USB is plenty fast enough (USB2, anyway) to handle high-bitrate OTA streams. Even the highest quality Blu-Ray disc is encoded at 40mbit/s, while USB2 can handle up to 480mbit/s. Remember, Blu-Ray is 1080p @60fps, while OTA broadcasts are 1080i @24fps, which requires a lot less bandwidth. In reality OTA broadcasts require about 18-20mbit/s before you completely lose your ability to make the quality better, no matter how many bits you throw at it. That's half.
So don't say that USB can't hack it, because it can. Whether or not your USB device has the hardware necessary to pump that much data is something you will need to raise with your hardware provider.
If the USB2 bus is 480mbit/s and even the highest bandwidth channel requires 20mbit/s, your USB2 bus can handle 24 simultaneous (lets say 23 because of overhead) OTA streams before running out of bandwidth.
"There's a certain amount of dumbing down, to be sure, and nothing's going to beat your laptop for speed or comprehensiveness in bopping around this sort of information."
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USB is plenty fast enough (USB2, anyway) to handle high-bitrate OTA streams. Even the highest quality Blu-Ray disc is encoded at 40mbit/s, while USB2 can handle up to 480mbit/s. Remember, Blu-Ray is 1080p @60fps, while OTA broadcasts are 1080i @24fps, which requires a lot less bandwidth. In reality OTA broadcasts require about 18-20mbit/s before you completely lose your ability to make the quality better, no matter how many bits you throw at it. That's half.
So don't say that USB can't hack it, because it can. Whether or not your USB device has the hardware necessary to pump that much data is something you will need to raise with your hardware provider.
If the USB2 bus is 480mbit/s and even the highest bandwidth channel requires 20mbit/s, your USB2 bus can handle 24 simultaneous (lets say 23 because of overhead) OTA streams before running out of bandwidth.
USB2 isn't the problem.